


Conspiracy Buddies

by aeroa113



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Other, Platonic Relationships, not that other faker, this is real Shiro
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 07:42:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeroa113/pseuds/aeroa113
Summary: After a long day of training, team Voltron returns to the Castle and discusses life back on Earth. Pidge discovers that Keith was just as much as a conspiracy theorist as they were back on Earth, and decides to pry.The question is, is Keith willing to open up?





	Conspiracy Buddies

“Paladins, you must come back to the castle! The solar storm is too dangerous to train in!”

_She’s right._

“Come on, Allura…”

_God dammit, Lance..._

“Lance, the last time you persuaded me to let you all keep training you nearly lost an arm.”

“Keith wasn’t looking where he was swinging!”

_There he goes again, with the accusations._

“You weren’t focusing on where my blade was.”

“I was tired, okay!?”

Allura groaned pointedly into the coms, silencing the bickering red and blue paladins. Keith slumped in his chair, glaring out through Red’s eyes. He was tired. Everyone was tired. It had been a long day for the whole team as they practiced Voltron’s swordsmanship by slicing through an asteroid belt orbiting a nearby star. However, solar flares kept licking at Voltron’s heels -- Keith knew, because Lance couldn’t seem to shut up about it -- and only worsened by the varga. This star was on the verge of breaking out into a full-on storm.

“I’m afraid training must be cut short today,” he heard Allura advise through the coms. “I think we all need a bit of a break.”

“The princess is right,” Shiro agreed, “everyone back to the castle.”

Exhaustion practically radiated off the giant defender of the universe, looking as tired as the team that piloted it. Voltron broke apart into lions, each lumbering its way slowly back to the castle ship.

One by one, the pilots filed out of their ships and converged outside of their respective hangars, Keith being the first one there. For a few ticks, nobody said anything; exhaustion hung heavily in the air.

“Who wants some pizza rolls?” asked Hunk, a big smile on his face as he gently elbowed Pidge. Hunk was always looking out for everyone when times were tough. Keith admired that about him. “Coran and I stopped by a space food market, and I got some ingredients that I bet will work! Is everyone okay with kyraxian lemur pepperoni?”

Lance seemed to perk up at the mention of pizza rolls. “Heck yeah, man, I could go for some pizza rolls!”

“Man, pizza rolls…” Pidge mumbled, holding their stomach.

Keith didn’t comment, watching his feet as they all walked away from the lions’ hangars.

“I think I can speak for Keith and say that we both would love some pizza rolls, Hunk,” Shiro said, clasping the red paladin’s shoulder as he offered Hunk a soft smile. Shiro seemed to have noticed Keith’s pointed silence, and took the opportunity to step in. Just like him to be the supportive older brother. That was something he admired about Shiro.

Hunk nodded and, with a grin on his face and a skip in his step, pulled in front of the others, running to the dining hall.

Once silence befell the remaining paladins again, Lance narrowed his eyes and turned to Keith. “What’s up with you?” he asked, arms folded and nose stuck up at his rival. “Never had pizza rolls before?”

He couldn’t help but be slightly offended at the accusation, despite its truthfulness. He narrowed his eyes right back. “No. I haven’t,” he deadpanned in an effort to not make it a big deal.

“What!?” Lance and Pidge screeched in unison, causing both the red and black paladins to cringe. Looks like it was a big deal.

“Well, thank god Hunk is the first person to make you pizza rolls! My boy makes the best pizza rolls on this side of the universe!” Lance said, very proud of his friend’s cooking skills. Slowly, Lance’s expression shifted as he came to a realization. “Y’know…this actually reminds me of something.” He beckoned for the others to follow him. Although Keith was stubborn, he could never help but be interested in Lance’s stories. He listened in as they walked.

“One time,” Lance began, “when I was little, me and my friends were playing outside in the rain. We were having all sorts of fun and fighting each other. That rain, though, turned out to be a big storm that had started off pretty harmless. My mom saw that there was lightning, so she made us all come inside. To make up for having less time outside, she made us all pizza rolls as we watched the storm! Huh! I guess history repeats itself, even in space.”

“Coincidence? Or not?” Pidge asked, their tone dark as the ambient light shone brightly off of the lenses of their glasses.

Keith let himself snort slightly at their reaction. “Conspiracies at their finest.”

Pidge grinned up at him in response; they were very pleased to get a reaction out of him, he noted.

“I remember,” Pidge said, “when Matt and I were little, we’d sit and stare at the thunderstorms at night, even though my dad told us to go to bed.”

“Man, really? My siblings never let me stay up with them!” Lance complained.

They snickered devilishly. “Matt never cared what I did, he’d help me sneak out, even.”

“What?! Not fair!”

Lance and Pidge continued to bicker like siblings as Keith and Shiro trailed behind them. The blue and green paladins always seemed to argue, but it never felt cold-hearted. Both were used to sibling arguments, but since their biological ones were all scattered someplace in the universe, they had to make up for it, somehow. Backup siblings. Keith liked how those two kept their humanity even though the fate of the universe was in their hands. They found home here.

All the talk of families, weather, and home had caused Keith to close in on himself. He didn’t come back to reality until Shiro squeezed his shoulder lightly. Keith met his eyes -- they were fond, supportive.

Like home.

The closest thing to home he had.

All the way to the dining area the blue and green paladins discussed Earth weather, their families, and different stories about both subjects, with the other two settling into a comfortable silence. Allura and Coran were waiting for them at the table with smiles and encouraging words about the day’s work. Keith thanked both of them and took his place at the table. Shiro sat beside him and gave another brief look of support before curiously listening in on Lance and Pidge’s conversation.

“... Matt wouldn’t put down the lightning rod for anything,” Pidge was saying, wiping tears from their eyes from laughing. “‘I need to see if I can catch some! I need it for my science project!’ he was shouting. Mom almost kicked his ass when he got down from the roof!”

As Lance was laughing along with Pidge, he finally seemed to notice that Keith hadn’t said a word this whole time. “Hey man,” he asked. Keith barely glanced up from his lap. “What was weather out in the desert like?”

For a moment Keith stared him down. Lance, asking him a personal question like this. He didn’t exactly feel like reliving the dust storms, the unbearable heat from the days and the bitter cold of the nights, or boarding up his windows to keep the sand and dirt from blowing into the shack and messing up all of his calculations and maps (or the numerous times that had happened, and he’d have to start from square one again). Especially not with all of these people listening.

He decided to keep it simple.

“Hot. Dust storms sometimes…”

“Oh! Uh, cool!” Lance responded, and tried to smile encouragingly, expecting Keith to say more.

When Keith didn’t elaborate, a thick, awkward atmosphere settled at the dinner table. Keith knew full well that it was his fault, but he refused to fix it. Too many eyes. Too exhausted.  
Shiro was the first to break the silence. Always to the rescue. “Keith… I know that the shack wasn’t exactly a high point in your life, but what else did you see out there, when you weren’t studying the Blue Lion?”

Keith stared at Shiro for a moment, eyes flicking over the others’ faces. He was trying to change the subject, which was extremely appreciated, but it still drew everyone’s attention to him. The heat of embarrassment rested on his cheeks as everyone’s eyes focused on him, waiting, expectant. He knew for a fact that he wasn’t going to get out of this.  
“Well, um… I…” Anxiety pent up in his throat. This had opened up an entirely new can of worms. He knew what he saw in the desert. He knew what he believed. But he also knew the laughter and criticism that followed the explanations of his theories and research. The way others looked at him. “I saw a lot of things that I… couldn’t explain. Strange creatures, noises, movements…”

A familiar scoff from across the table nearly made Keith snap his neck by how fast he whipped his head around. “Lance, we battle space goblins in gigantic alien cat warships for a living. How is strange creatures being on Earth so hard to believe?”

“What kind of creatures?”

An unexpected question from Pidge drew everyone’s attention to them.

“I…” Keith blinked at the small paladin who sat across the table from him. “Excuse me?”

“What kind of creatures did you see out in the desert?” Pidge asked again, elbows on the table and leaning in, eyes glimmering with interest.

This was by far the strangest but most encouraging response he had ever gotten to his mention of cryptids. It was almost heartwarming to see someone show some intrigue. “Well,” he began, “I would see these weird creatures with long, spindly legs scuttling along the horizon. They’d come out at dusk and go from north to south.”

He felt silly saying these things out loud. He could feel the stares of the other paladins boring into his skull, bringing heat into his cheeks again. But Pidge still kept their eyes on him intently, nodding rapidly to everything he said. Keith continued, “I’d feel these reverberations occasionally through the floorboards of my shack.”

Pidge perked up even more at that, hands creeping onto the table as they asked, “Were they super low, kinda came in waves, kinda shook everything and the air around you?”

“Y… yeah. Yeah.” Keith felt himself perk up a little as well. “Have… have you?”

“Have I!?” With a wild grin on their face, Pidge practically leaped out of their chair and was on the other side of the table, latched onto his arm before he could even register what was happening. As Keith was dragged away from the table, Pidge started rambling: “I’ve been studying those reverberations for months! I always questioned Iverson about it and he always told me it was the helicopters or the flight sim or other missions going on, but I knew he was lying, there was NO way that he was telling the truth, I knew that something outside the facility was causing everything to vibrate. I’ve had these hypotheses going on that it was these UFO’s, which everyone thought was dumb, but look where we are now!…”

A million things raced through Keith’s head on top of the million words a minute Pidge was speaking. Why was Pidge grabbing his arm? Why were they so happy to speak to him? Where in the world were they going? Was he gonna be able to finish his food?

The door to the dining room slid shut.

  
  


Silence.

“... Are we… gonna talk about what just happened here?” Hunk asked after a beat, pointing towards the door and eyeing the rest of the team.

Lance folded his arms. “Two crazy kids talking about crazy things… crazy,” he said.

After no one moved for another few ticks, Lance stood. “Well? Is no one going to follow them?” He threw his arms incredulously towards the door that the conspiracy theorists had left through.

To everyone’s surprise, Shiro was the first to stand and head out the door. One by one the others followed, curious as to what the two paladins were discussing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y'all, thanks for reading! This is chapter one of two, and I may add on more... I'm not sure. I think that two chapters will do the trick, I don't think this will be all that long. Lemme know what you think! I promise we'll get some actual Kidge in the next chapter, haha. <3
> 
> Go follow me! I draw and stuff sometimes, and I might do fics more often if I can find the time. <3  
> [aeroa113.tumblr.com](aeroa113.tumblr.com)


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